


We Got A Good Thing Goin' On

by j_ranked



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amusement Parks, F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, First Dates, Very little dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 15:31:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10834134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_ranked/pseuds/j_ranked
Summary: After much debate, two tickets for the amusement park are purchased with patched together allowance and part-time minimum wages. Pidge picks what has to be the hottest day of the year to go, concrete wavering in the heatwave. She comes dressed in a flowery tank beneath overall shorts, hauling around her neon green backpack. Her hair is tied into the usual side pony and she insists on spraying them both with sunscreen as soon as they arrive.Keith thinks the patches of sunscreen she unashamedly wipes on her cheeks and nose look like war paint.





	We Got A Good Thing Goin' On

**Author's Note:**

> Title from First Day of Summer by Jesse Ruben.

After much debate, two tickets for the amusement park are purchased with patched together allowance and part-time minimum wages. Pidge picks what has to be the hottest day of the year to go, concrete wavering in the heatwave. She comes dressed in a flowery tank beneath overall shorts, hauling around her neon green backpack. Her hair is tied into the usual side pony and she insists on spraying them both with sunscreen as soon as they arrive.

Keith thinks the patches of sunscreen she unashamedly wipes on her cheeks and nose look like war paint.

It’s their first outing alone, and he’s a bit nervous for reasons he can’t pinpoint. If Keith had to describe his relationship with Pidge, it would be comfortable. It was only two days ago that he’d wiped out while trying a new board trick with her sitting on the sidelines. A waterproof Band-Aid still covers most of his right cheek where it had skid across the asphalt as he tripped on air. Pidge had laughed for a good five minutes and then some more when he’d applied the Band-Aid, claiming he looked like a cliché anime character.

At this point, he shouldn’t be nervous, but he _is_.

Perhaps it has to do with the easy way she grasps his arm and pulls him in the direction of the drop tower, informing him of the Game Plan. Drop tower, water rides, rollercoasters, spinning rides, general, Ferris wheel. In that order. Lunch is to be eaten after they’ve finished the spinning rides, she declares and he doesn’t argue. The memory of Pidge getting carsick and barfing all over Lance and Allura last summer is too vivid. Hunk had sympathy-barfed right after and Shiro’s car honestly hasn’t smelt the same since.

She grins up at him as they reach the line. The drop tower casts a shadow over them as they near it, shining impossibly high in the sun-bleached blue of the sky. An inquisitive look blooms in her eyes as she raises a brow, scratching absently at her own camouflage Band-Aid beneath her elbow, procured when she ran into a wall and scraped her arm when she was fiddling with a scrap of machinery.

“Are you okay?” Pidge questions, “You’re only this quiet when you’re being Emo Keith, and no offense to him, but I kinda want to be on a date with Regular Keith. Even if he _is_ a loser who kissed concrete.”

Offense at the tacked-on jibe doesn’t come, if only because the only word he really registers is ‘date’. He coughs as he almost swallows his gum, feeling heat crawl up the back of his neck and burn the tips of his ears. “D- _Date_?”

“Isn’t…that what this is?”

 She doesn’t look as certain as she had earlier and it makes his stomach twist oddly in his stomach. He supposes she has a point. Asking Pidge to go out with him had never been a planned event until today. They had paid for it together by Frankesteining their funds after coming to a consensus on the location and to be honest, it hadn’t even occurred to him to invite the others along. This trip had always been for him and Pidge; Pidge and him.

Now that she’s pointing it out, it’s obvious to him that he _did_ ask Pidge out. The idea isn’t unappealing. The sense of nervousness from earlier is easily shifting into restless energy and his lips curl upwards.

“It is,” he confirms and it feels like the first cool drops of rain after a two-year drought.

.

They’ve ridden all the rollercoasters and the spinning cups when Pidge decides it’s safe to eat. Keith leads the way to a grassy area through the excitable crowds, yanking a blanket from his backpack to set on the ground. Pidge wastes no time tossing her own on the claimed spot after digging for her sunscreen, beginning to reapply. Most of it has washed away from the water rides, but she’s dry enough for it to stick again. Keith’s clothes are no longer dripping, courtesy of high speed travels, but his sneakers seem to be irredeemable. Every step he takes is accompanied by a squelch of waterlogged material.

After getting his own sunscreen reapplied, he sits pretzel on the blanket. Baggies of sandwiches are procured and he has to stop Pidge from accidentally taking the ones with crunchy peanut butter, snorting as she gives him an exaggerated look of disgust as he snags it out of her hands. He slides the baggies with the smooth spreading and she takes out a crushed, half-eaten bag of potato chips and the juice boxes Keith loves. It’s only after three sandwiches each have been devoured, empty chip bag shoved into the front pocket of Pidge’s bag, that Keith unzips the other section of his.

The peanut butter cookies are somewhat smooshed, crumbling, but his companion still lights up like he just awarded her a Nobel Prize. A peanut butter jar, smooth, is added to the fray because he knows the younger likes to dip her cookies in it, even if he himself doesn’t understand the concept.

He watches the way her hair shines as she animatedly explains a lecture she attended the other day, how her expressions shift with every sentence, and her reactions whenever he gives his two cents. He’s always believed that Pidge was beautiful, but it feels like he’s noticing it for the first time. His chest feels like a dam springing leaks at the sheer affection that floods him unbidden.

He likes her.

Like, _like-likes_ her.

He finds himself wondering if Lance was right about him being oblivious.

.

By the time they board the Ferris wheel, its dark out. The sky is a deep navy, the cacophony of the crowd quieting as they begin their ascent to the top. Keith knows the stars are coming out, but the light pollution from the rest of the park make them hard to see. Pidge is rocking the passenger car by swinging her feet as she picks at the candy floss he had managed to scrounge enough money to buy with leftover pocket change. He won’t have any spare cash until his next payday but with his crush smiling contently beside him, he figures it’s worth it.

He startles as Pidge leans on his shoulder, bony shoulder and elbow digging into his torso. Her hair has gone frizzy from drying in the sun and it tickles as her ponytail touches his neck. When she grabs his hand, her fingers are sticky with sugar and sweat.

“This was fun,” she comments, eyes focused off on the horizon that’s steadily coming into view. It’s easy to tell she’s nervous, if only because he knows her so well.

Twining his fingers with hers breaks the apathetic face and it may be the bright lights from under them, but it looks like she’s blushing around the sun burn that blossomed on her skin despite the precautions. Keith gnaws on his lip and focuses on her hand in his grip.  It’s not much smaller than his, covered in similar scars and callouses. There’s a burn mark on the back of her palm that he remembers came from a sparking wire from one of her robotics projects.

“We should do this again,” he starts, “I mean, uh. If you want to.”

“Will you actually realize you’re asking me out next time?”

He sends a guilty look her way and she replies with a mischievous grin, jabbing her fingers into his side and breaking into a laugh as he grunts.

“I _suppose_ a second date with you wouldn’t hurt me _too_ much,” her tone is cheeky as she turns to him. “A kiss before we head home tonight may even win you favor for a third one.”

It’s both a joke and an askance, he can tell by the way her burned cheeks turn a ruddy red that has nothing to do with the sun scorching pale skin. His face feels like its burning, too, and he wonders if he looks as ridiculous as she does, face imitating a lobster. If the older teen wasn’t so worried about dying from embarrassment, he may have found his heartrate alarming as the organ threatened to crawl out of his throat. Keith clears his throat to bolster his courage and leans in to press a chaste kiss onto her cheek because, despite his reputation for being headstrong, emotions of the heart have always been more complicated to him.

Katie is one of his best friends and losing her would hurt more than a lifetime of pining ever could.

She chortles at him and frees her hand to smash his cheeks together in an unattractive way. Her hazel eyes are soft as she looks at him, giggling in amusement as he places his own hands on her face to gently tug her cheeks out. If anyone could see them this high, they surely must look ridiculous.

“We’ll work on it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of an experimental style for this piece, so feel free to tell me 'yay' or 'nay'. This was super fun to write, though, so I hope you enjoyed reading! I will most definitely be writing more Keith/Pidge in the future!


End file.
